BUJALSKI LISTS DE PALMA AS AN INFLUENCEDIRECTOR EMPLOYS SPLIT SCREENS IN NEW MOVIE, 'COMPUTER CHESS'

Computer Chess director Andrew Bujalski includes Brian De Palma on a list of his cultural influences, as told to Vulture's Jennifer Vineyard. Here is what Bujalski said about De Palma: "De Palma will spend an hour of the movie whipping you into a frenzy, building the house of cards, and then end the movie gleefully knocking it down in a way that infuriates half the audience but is still commercially viable. And Lord knows I love his split screens. And I finally got to do them in Computer Chess, to put a few split screens in the movie. Not with the level of invention or meticulousness that he brings, but it was fun to pretend that I was De Palma for five minutes."

Computer Chess opened this past Wednesday in New York. Salon's Andrew O'Hehir calls it a "profound, peculiar work of genius."

Armond White writes of the film, "Mumblecore originator Bujalski has found the wit to break out from its conspicuous routines and make the genre’s most stylistically varied, artistically adventurous film with Computer Chess. Bujalski actually employs montage and style–idiosyncratic style–that goes past simply being unHollywood and creates its own uniquely nerd vision."

A. O. Scott of the New York Times calls it "peculiar and sneakily brilliant." And NPR's Ella Taylor writes, "The beguiling Computer Chess is about the dawn — one of many, but that's another story — of the tech revolution. It's also a reminder that you don't need state-of-the-art toys to make a formally playful comedy about man versus machine."

ALCAINE TO RECEIVE LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARDIN SEPT. AT MANAKI BROTHERS INTERNATIONAL CINEMATOGRAPHERS' FILM FESTIVALPassion cinematographer Jose Luis Alcaine will be on hand to receive the 2013 Golden Camera 300 for Lifetime Achievement at this year's Manaki Brothers International Cinematographers' Film Festival, which takes place from September 15th through the 21st. According to the press release, Alcaine "has put his signature on a truly record-breaking number of 145 films." Along with Passion, which is released in the U.S. next month, Alcaine recently shot Pedro Almodovar's I'm So Excited, currently playing in select U.S. theaters.

DE PALMA/STROMBO FULL EPISODE IS UPSEGMENT LASTS ABOUT 6 MINUTES OR SO

The full interview segment of Brian De Palma's appearance on CBC's George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight last night is now available to watch on the program's web site. The segment with De Palma is at the start of the show, and lasts about six minutes or so. De Palma talks about Passion, plays around with the idea of texting during dates, discusses the lack of a current counterculture in film, Robert De Niro, and quotes from Scarface.

Strombo: "You came of age in the cinema when you guys were picking big fights with society, the counterculture movement was in fact not about just looks."

BDP: "No, no, no."

Strombo: "It was the opposite of that."

BDP: "And we had another war we shouldn't have been in: Vietnam."

Strombo: "Is that what it was, you think the war's..."

BDP: "Oh, absolutely."

Strombo: "Because then where are the countercultural films today, then?"

BDP: "That's the problem! Because you don't see many sort of political films other than the... I mean, obviously, you don't have to make political films all the time, but when you see a lot of stuff going out there that's annoying you, you would think that, you know, your blood would be stirred. That you'd go out and make a movie about it saying, 'This is not right'"

Strombo: "You obviously have to keep busy, but you also said there isn't enough anger in American cinema anymore."

BDP: "Well, I was very upset about the whole war, and what the Bush administration was doing, so that's why I made Redacted. Because I didn't think that they were telling us the truth. What else is new? Your government is lying to you, what else is new? But I felt we were doing some very bad things in far away places."

Strombo: "And you didn't think that was the right coverage of it."

BDP: "Oh, I knew-- an embedded reporter? That's like having somebody on the payroll."

VIDEO: DE PALMA ON DISCOVERING DE NIROWANTED TO SHOW THEM SCENE FROM 'THE STRIKE', EVEN AFTER HE'D GOTTEN THE PART

The above video is a clip from tonight's episode of CBC's George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight. In the clip, Strombo shows a scene from De Palma's The Wedding Party, and asks De Palma about casting the 20-year-old Robert De Niro in his first film. Here is the transcript from the Strombo site, as well:

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GS: The Wedding Party, 1963, Robert De Niro, 20 years old in that. Is that his first film?

BDP: Yes, that was his first film.

GS: When you saw him did you know that there is something special there?

BDP: He came in to an audition. We were in a loft in the Village and we put an ad in the Village Voice and we were just seeing one actor after another then this sort of timid kid came in, the last one in. We had him do a little improvisation and we thought 'Hey, this kid is pretty good' and he said ok, but there's something I've been preparing in my class can I show it to you. The kid had the part, I mean, okay. So he goes outside and we're sititng around and it's like 5, 10 15 [minutes], we figured he had gone home and then he came in a did this incredible scene from 'The Strike', the Clifford Odets play about the taxi strike . He was ranting and raving and [yells] and you think, holy mackerel. That's Bob De Niro.

DE PALMA TO APPEAR ON STROMBO WEDNESDAYSTEVEN BAUER LAST NIGHT: "EVERY SINGLE DAY IS A SCARFACE DAY"

Brian De Palma is a scheduled guest for Wednesday's edition of CBC Television's George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight. The web site description states, "Director Brian De Palma is here to talk about his new movie Passion and his long career in the movie biz. From Carrie, his breakthrough feature which redefined 'prom night disaster' to the iconic Scarface, this is a director who keeps the audience's attention."

De Palma's appearance comes just two days after Steven Bauer appeared on the show (see video above). Bauer is making the rounds for his role on the new Showtime series Ray Donovan, but spent most of his interview talking about Scarface. Stroumboulopoulos asked Bauer, "Does the Manny from Scarface thing happen every day in your life?" To which Bauer replied, "Every single day is a Scarface day." In discussing his role on AMC's Breaking Bad, Bauer mentioned that, again, Scarface came through for him, because creator Vince Gilligan, a fan of De Palma's film, had the idea to basically take Manny and put him in the show.

Bauer was also interviewed by Parade's Joel Keller, and dicussed screenwriter Oliver Stone getting banned from the Scarface set: "There was so much disagreement on some points that Oliver Stone was banned from the movie. He was banned from the set. Brian [De Palma] didn’t want him around. For the most part, Al [Pacino] didn’t either, because Oliver would show up with a big fat script under his arm and he’d say ‘Have you shot this today?’ And he would always find me: ‘Steve. Steve. Come here. Have you shot this scene?’ And I’d say, ‘No. They cut it. We’re not doing it.’ And he’d go crazy and he’d run into Al’s dressing room and he’d be nuts. He would have a big battle with Brian De Palma and Brian was just like ‘You know what? You did your job. You let us make the movie.’"

Bauer also told Keller about the initial bad reviews: "Some of them were really horrible on Al, on his acting. They were like ‘Oh, he’s over the top. He’s become operatic. He should go back to acting school.’ It was really, really terrible, and it’s funny because he had prepared me for it. We were together all the time and I used to speculate. I used to drive him crazy and say, ‘What do you think? Can you imagine…’ because we’d finish a scene and it would be so out there, so crazy. He always kept me with him and I would make him laugh and stuff. We’d joke about stuff and I’d say ‘What do you think your fans are going to think of this Montana character?’ He used to say, ‘All I can do is do what I do every day and try not to think about their responses.’ He said ‘They’re either going to love it or they’re going to hate it. It’s not going to be middle ground.’ And that’s exactly what happened."

The YouTube video above includes an interview with Deborah Shelton from 1987 [Thanks to Alex for finding it!]. At about the 5:40 mark, the interviewer asks her about Body Double. Here is a transcript:

Interviewer: In 1984, you ended up in the Brian De Palma movie, Body Double. How did that happen?

Deborah: Same way—I went on an interview and they were looking for a blonde. [Laughing] There’s something about... Yeah, I have a blonde personality. And I met him, and he was very quiet. And the executive producer was talking to me all the time, and the casting person. And Brian just sat there and was like [lifts her chin up to mimic De Palma, slowly nodding as if quietly watching and contemplating what he was seeing]. And sometimes he looked away, and he didn’t… I thought, “Oh, get me out of here. This is a lost cause.” And when I left there I stopped off at the bathroom on the way out of the building. And when I finally got out of the building, the lady who was the casting director was running around hysterically outside searching for me. And she said, “Where were you?” Then I told her I’d just stopped off. And she said, “Brian wants to see you tomorrow at his office, and he wants to work with you.”

And he worked with me, with the screenplay… oh, I can’t think, with Liv Ullmann… Scenes From A Marriage, on a scene where she had just learned her husband was fooling around for a long time, and that her best friends had known it. She was very angry and frustrated. And another scene from Body Heat… where the two meet on a bridge. And so, he told me he wanted the sensuality of Body Heat, and the frustration and panic, and those kind of feelings from Scenes From A Marriage. So we worked on those two scenes, and those are the ones I did with my screen test. Because my part didn’t really have so much dialogue. And I got it.

And how was he as a director? I mean, on the set…

Wonderful.

Really?

He’s very intense. He almost has an unnerving way about him. And you know Vincent Price? The actor? He has a way of looking, the piercing eyes, that just kind of go into your backbone, and take feelings out of you. And I think that’s the way Brian is.

We’re talking to Brian De Palma, who is here to show his film, Passion. Tell us about the film.

De Palma: The film is based on a French film made by Alain Corneau. It’s about the rivalry of two executives in an advertising firm in Germany.

So what was your inspiration for taking this film on?

De Palma: I liked the characters. In the original film, Kristin Scott Thomas played one of the women, and I liked their interaction. I thought the mystery was extremely clever, but there are some things about it that bothered me a little bit. I thought that Corneau revealed the murderer much too early, so there was no reason to keep on going through the film to figure out who killed who and why. So I tried to keep that hidden as long as possible.

Is this your first trip to Provincetown?

De Palma: Yes.

What do you think about it so far?

De Palma: It’s beautiful. I’m mainly here because my daughter is going to camp in the area, and I can send her off.

What other projects are you working on?

De Palma: Well, right now I’m developing a script based on the Joe Paterno/Sandusky case. It’s a very complicated, difficult, and tragic story.

What do you think about all this hoopla people are making over gay marriage in this country?

De Palma: Ridiculous. They should have the rights as any American citizen.

Why do you think it’s taking so long?

De Palma: Any unusual lifestyle sometimes takes a little while to be understood by the mass populace, I imagine.

DE PALMA SETS RECORD STRAIGHT ON DAFT PUNKWAS NEVER APPROACHED ABOUT DIRECTING A DAFT PUNK VIDEO;"DAFT PUNK EXPRESSED AN INTEREST IN DOING SOMETHING WITH 'PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE'"In a Twitter conversation last month, Empire magazine reviews editor Nick de Semlyen, who had just interviewed Brian De Palma, mentioned that De Palma was going to direct a music video for "the Paul Williams track" on Daft Punk's latest album, but that "it didn't work out."

Yesterday, The Playlist's Drew Taylor interviewed De Palma, and asked him about it. "I don't know where this rumor got started," De Palma said to Taylor. "Let's try to put an end to it here and now. Daft Punk expressed an interest in doing something with Phantom of the Paradise and when I was in Paris I met with them and we discussed it. They were in the process of finishing up their record." De Palma added, "It was never discussed, me doing a video for them. They expressed their excitement for Phantom of the Paradise and somehow, if we have a stage version, they might consider doing music for it. But that was as far as it went. It was very tentative, very initial discussions."

Taylor pressed on for more details about a stage version of Phantom. "They've tried to do a stage production for 30 years," De Palma told him. "Every once in a while there's a lot of excitement about it and then it fades away. It always seems like a good idea to me."

From 2009 until at least 2010, Paul Williams had been working with De Palma and Edward R. Pressman on a stage version of Phantom, something they have taken stabs at off and on for years. De Palma and Williams had tried to get a stage version going in 1987, and in 2003, Antonio Banderas discussed the possibility of taking on the title character for a stage version. For now, however, we have the incredible film from 1974. And, of course, the Baltimore Rock Opera Society.